Comments on: Cut $343000000000 from the Budget

By: Adam Greenwood

Adam Greenwood — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 16:05:37 +0000

i also have faith in citizen initiative to tack on unworkable entitlements and spending requirements.

Christie is a great proof of concept that a budget-cutting pol can make hay.

By: Zen

Zen — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:52:14 +0000

It is not so much that we can’t figure out how to balance the budget, it is just that we lack the spine and balls to do it.

I have more faith in citizen initiatives and propositions to make the hard choices, than I have in our politicians.

By: Bookslinger

Bookslinger — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 03:39:39 +0000

I was going to say that entitlements are the elephant in the room. Since entitlements are not funded, there is _no way_ that the budget can be balanced, let alone paid down, without reworking how entitlements can be limited, either by tieing overall payments to overall receipts, or tieing individual payouts to individual contributions.

Actuarily, the budgetary catastrophe was sealed when entitlements were enacted as open-ended “entitlements” with no connection whatsoever to contributions or overall collections.

Any student of actuarial science learns this in the 1st and 2nd course regarding life insurance, of LOMA, Life Office Management Association. Any other belief is literally a fairy tale.

By: Vader

Vader — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:42:03 +0000

The ideas in there are mostly good, so far as they go, but until you come to grips with entitlements it’s ignoring the bantha in the living room.

Also, nothing is said about defense. Important as it is to have well-trained gunners and TIE fighter pilots on the Death Star, there has got to be some room for cuts here. I’d advise the Emperor against declaring a Death Star with half its shell incomplete to be “fully armed and operational,” but there is probably room for rational cuts elsewhere.